Weekly Legislative Review

March 3, 2012

Editor's Note: Each week during 80th West Virginia Legislature, The Journal is providing space and inviting comments from all members of the Eastern Panhandle's legislative delegation. The following is a sampling of the submitted comments this week from the House of Delegates and Senate:

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Delegate Walter Duke, R-54th District:

I attended a public hearing regarding SJR 11 that proposes a constitutional amendment that would authorize West Virginia to issue up to $1.5 billion in road bonds. The borrowed money would raise enough revenue to fund 19 road building projects. Nine projects would be in southern West Virginia, five more along the Ohio River and two would be in the Eastern Panhandle-one for a section of Route 522 in Morgan County and one to complete a stretch of Route 340 between Charles Town and the Virginia line near Berryville. Word is that SJR will not pass.

This week, I offered a floor amendment to HB 4653 to provide for a two-year phased in school funding reform. It was similar to a two-year phased in reform of the school aid formula we passed in 2006 that increased the amount of state tax dollars (that we send to Charleston) that would be returned to every county to help fund our schools. While all eight Eastern Panhandle delegates supported the amendment, it failed 30 (28R and 2D) to 63 (6R and 57D).

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Delegate John Overington, R-55th District:

This week we heard very emotional speeches from several delegates on HB 4351, the mine safety bill. Speaker Rick Thompson, who lost his father in a mine accident, and others who had lost relatives and friends spoke in favor of this bill, which passed unanimously. The House has a number of articulate speakers who spoke very passionately on the need to stop tragedies like the Upper Big Branch disaster from occurring again.

The passage of HJR 113, the Homestead Exemption Amendment, in the House of Delegates is the culmination of years of work by many people. We recognized that the 1982 Amendment with a threshold of $20,000 covered the cost of a modest house back then but, in today's market, even with recently deflated prices, would barely cover the cost of the home's garage and front porch.

HJR 113 now goes to the Senate and, if passed there will go to the voters of West Virginia to decide. Each county, if there is no detrimental financial impact, will get a chance to approve a higher Homestead Exemption if the individual county's governing body approves it.

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Delegate Tiffany Lawrence, D-58th District:

This week has been action packed as crossover day ... 58 bills on third reading ... crossed to the Senate. Of those bills, several very important measures were discussed and subsequently passed.

Namely HB 4077, of which I'm a sponsor, would allow a dental hygienist to place dental sealants on a patient's teeth. Currently, a prior examination by a dentist would have to be conducted and processed prior to this work. This bill will allow for the prevention of cavities by freeing up dentists for more invasive procedures and shall assist with the overall oral health crisis in West Virginia.

As a granddaughter of a West Virginia coal miner, I feel I'd be remiss if I didn't mention HB 4351 which is monumental in the creation of a safer work environment for coal miners in our state. The bill provides two new criminal offenses for advance notice of government mine inspections and certain willful safety violations.

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Delegate Larry D. Kump, R-52th District:

HB 4263 is the West Virginia Buy American Act proposal, which callously trades upon a popular slogan and our national pride in order to increase the cost to taxpayers for public building projects. Instead of simply requiring contractors to make a reasonable effort to use American-made products in public project construction, HB 4263 establishes a complicated "Rube Goldberg" set of approval rules for the use of construction materials. It also could require taxpayers to pay contractors much more than normal competitive prices for those construction materials.

Even worse, the rules set by HB 4263 are so byzantine and stifling that it even actually could discriminate against West Virginia contractors and cause them to lose business because they cannot readily obtain American-made project materials.

HB 4263, despite its good intentions, is not a jobs creation bill. It actually could do much more harm than good. Delegate Daryl Cowles, R-Morgan, who is a contractor, made valiant attempts to correct (amend) some of the worst inequities in HB 4263, but was voted down.

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Delegate John Doyle, D-57th District:

On Feb. 26, the House of Delegates passed a bill allowing injured parties to inquire about how much insurance coverage is held by the person who has possibly inflicted a tort. The bill engendered much more debate than I thought necessary. I see it as a simple change to our tort laws that will actually keep a few lawsuits from reaching the courts.

The insurance industry and the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce, however, saw it quite differently. They claim it's going to increase lawsuits. I don't see how. Under current law you are not allowed to know how much insurance a person has, or even if the person has insurance. This is so juries will not know that information. The logic behind this is that if jurors know how much insurance a defendant has in a lawsuit, there might be a tendency to award the defendant a sum very close to the amount of coverage the defendant has.

The presumption in West Virginia courts (and the courts of many other states) is that if the jury does not know the amount and extent of insurance coverage, they will make a decision strictly on the facts of the case. While I'm sure that doesn't happen every time, I think juries get it close to right for the most part. The bill in question will not change that. What it will do, if enacted (it must still pass the Senate), is give a potential plaintiff some idea whether or not taking a tort case to court is worthwhile.